The document discusses audience feedback that was received on a student horror trailer project. It provides details on: 1) How feedback was collected from peers - by having each trailer screened and receiving one positive and one area for improvement. 2) The most common feedback received focused on audio issues, particularly music/sounds overwhelming dialogue. 3) How the feedback was used to improve the trailer, such as clarifying an ambiguous character death and addressing audio concerns.

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What have you learnt
from your audience
feedback?
Evaluation Question Three

2.  Media companies and producers of even small/no budget films
thrive on audience feedback as this gives the creators a chance to
see specifically how they can improve their product.
 The importance of doing this is to make sure that the media
product is meeting the standards of the target audience, as the
success of the product relies on its popularity.
 In terms of creating an ad campaign for a film, audience feedback
is essential as the cost of a campaign such as that of The Woman in
Black was in the multi-millions. The people in charge of
marketing had to do a lot of research in terms of reaching the
target audience, and the audience feedback regarding the ad
campaign was key in getting an idea of how successful the film
was going to be on the release in 2012.
The Importance of
Audience Feedback

3.  After we had completed our first draft/rough cut of our horror
trailer, we put it to the rest of our peers in class time. Once the
trailers had been played to the rest students, there was the
opportunity to give individual feedback on the trailers. This
feedback came in the form of one thing which worked well, and
also one improvement that could be made.
 This was a very easy, quick and efficient way to receive feedback as
it was condensed and precise, which made it clear and easy to work
from.
 By using this method of feedback, it helped to hear it first hand,
and all of the input that spoken was valid. This method was also
filmed, which helped to revisit the feedback.
 It also helped to hear the frequency of certain points raised, as this
stressed the importance of it and therefore most likely needed to be
dealt with.
How we Received
Audience Feedback

4.  The feedback that we received regarding our trailer was very useful and mostly
addressed audio issues.
 The point that was most frequent was the issue of the audio (music and sound effects)
drowning out parts of the dialogue, and made it almost impossible to hear the actors
speak in the trailer. However, there was positive comments about the suspense which
the sound effects gave the trailer as a whole. There was a certain part at the end of our
trailer in which Demi exclaims that “I think it’s dead..” and is then grabbed by the
mannequin. However, we had initially put very loud suspenseful music over that
clip, and it was unclear as to what she was saying. This point was raised a number of
times in our audience feedback.
 Another one of the specific points which was raised was the ambiguity of the ‘death
of the antagonist’. We featured a mannequin falling to the ground after a struggle
with one of the protagonists, and members of the class addressed this as ruining the
story as it gave away the fact that the villain died at the end. However, this wasn’t the
case, but it was unclear to the audience which meant that we needed to address the
issue and make our intentions clearer in the trailer.
 There was also another common point regarding the lighting in the end few scenes
being too dark, however we felt that this worked well with the trailer and added the
mystery to the final scene.
 One individual point addressed the issue of the build-up taking too long and people
losing interest, as well as the final scene from the title ‘coming soon’.
Our Feedback for ‘FIGURE’

5.  We knew that the most important aspect to improve in our trailer was the
assumed death of the mannequin at the end of the trailer. We needed a way to
show that the mannequin wasn’t actually dead, so we decided to conform to our
sci-fi genre and make the mannequin a robot/alien form. To do this, we simply
added a red light to one of the actor’s eyes and made it flicker as he fell to the
ground, and then once the light has gone out and the audience is lead to believe
that he is dead, the light comes back on. This was an interesting visual effect
and I personally think it adds a great level of technicality to the trailer.
 Another one of the things we addressed was the audio drowning out the
dialogue of the actors. So we turned up the volume of the dialogue as well as
lowering the volume of the soundtrack to make the actors more clear. However,
in Demi’s final scene which was a big issue with audio, we decided to cut it
completely as we felt that just her audio worked well in building tension on her
own. In addition to this scene, we made the whole thing brighter and more
visible.
 We made the other scenes, especially in the build-up much darker, to fit the
horror genre and also make it suspenseful.
 The point raised about the build-up taking too long and dragging out, we
decided that it was just long enough, but changed the music build-up to work
with it rather than just remain continuous which allowed the audience to lose
interest. The build-up now leads more to the loud title sequence. We feel this
works better than having the title sound all through the build-up sequence.
How we Used the Feedback